Chapter 589: Working the Lottery
*Bing-Bong*
Please assume most of the dialogue is in Tide Tongue*
Thank you.
*Bing-Bong*
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“Our next batch of contestants will be: Zhen Hai, Zhen Yue, Zhen Tai, Zhen Guo, Zhen Feng, Zhen Xing, Zhen Liu, Alvis de Howlite, Iona Ecaredies and Lin Jang! Please come up to the stage and determine your fate.”
[Did…did any of us, place bets on whether or not the maestro would have to fight his cousins at any point of this tournament?,] Hurricroak asked.
[Don’t…think…so…]
[Wait a minute,] Nepherage interjected, [aren’t two of those names people of interest? Did none of us place any bets on our lord having to fight people he may have indirectly pissed off?]
[I believe we were on the train of thought that our lord would be facing off some pissed off inner disciple type warrior this early on,] Spring Brawler added, [that or irony dictates he faces off against that-oh hold up…I just realized something important.]
[Hmm? What’s wrong?,] Razorstella initiated.
[Do we know whether or not that “Myriad Marble Garden” thing has an exclusionary function in it? Like, it only allows designated parties to access it? Because if it does, I think our ringmaster might be a touch screwed…]
[Why would he-oh wait…I see what you’re saying now.]
It was in that moment, the kaijin recalled that on a technical level, they were separate entities from their lord, meaning there was a possibility of this dimension treasure being a repeat of what happened back in Spider Hell…
[Its gonna look really awkward if our “puppet master” lord is forced to fight without any “puppets”…]
[Wait…do the zakos count?]
[That…we never really establish whether or not they’re their own beings…]
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“Our next batch of contestants will be: Zhen Hai, Zhen Yue, Zhen Tai, Zhen Guo, Zhen Feng, Zhen Xing, Zhen Liu, Alvis de Howlite, Iona Ecaredies and Lin Jang! Please come up to the stage and determine your fate.”
The Hero Elder had been regularly calling out the names of the contestants as he summoned them up in groups of ten, in order to inform the audience about what was happening, but for the most part, they didn’t really notice or care since this was only the qualifier round.
However, once the names of this particular group was announced, some members of the crowd began to gossip something fierce.
“Yet another group of people I could care little about, why are they announcing all of these names? Just tell the ones of the tournament favorites!”
“To be fair my friend, just because someone is a tournament favorite, doesn’t mean they’re bound to win. A lot of people have a tendency to hide their fangs while in the midst of rivals after all.”
“Whatever you say oh mighty guru…”
“Zhen Hai…Zhen Guo…Zhen Xing…huh, that’s weird, those names weren’t on the competition roster of inner disciples participating this year.”
“Oh, I guess you haven’t heard. Those are the guys from the ‘branch clan’. The one from Stampeding Bison?”
“Stampeding Bison? Wait, we had a secondary branch?”
“Sorta…its…complicated.”
“Complicated my ass! They’re the brackborn bastards of that exile, and they’re about to get shown how inferior they are in comparison to our warriors!”
Gossip and badmouthing aside though, all of this chatter was blissfully drowned out by the sound of the rest of the crowd cheering or gasping at the sight of conflict happening in the dozen or so colored ball spaces where the actual action was happening.
None of the scions knew for certain whether they were going to be fighting a main clan soldier, an aether beast they had brought with them or even each other, but they all prayed that it wasn’t the latter option. While they were comfortable with fighting each other if necessary, they all had this feeling in their stomach that they were going to need each other during this tournament.
In a capacity greater than just providing moral support from the side lines.
That said, they also had mixed feelings about wanting to face the other members in their impromptu grouping, not out of any form of familiarity, but due to sheer…awkwardness of who their potential opponents were.
Or actual dread in the case of Zhen Liu.
‘Yup…that guy is definitely related to the late Marquis de Howlite…and there’s the dragon force guy I’ve been dreading about…and if that girl is actually related to my…merry little lamb, I should probably stop thinking about her right now.’
As if to mock his thoughts, Zhen Liu swore he saw Iona Ecaredies give him a dirty side eye before proceeding to ignore him.
Then again, it appeared to have been a quiet consensus to not talk to one another during this process of walking up to the fish-bowl shaped aether treasure.
Once everyone had gathered in front of the [Myriad Marble Garden] treasure, the Hero Elder gave the same instructions as he gave to the groups that came before.
“Alright, contestants, all you need to do is to feed your aether into this opening and grab one of the marbles that is inside of the treasure. Depending on what you grab, you’ll either be passed on to the next round with no complications, will have to earn your right through a trial by combat with a randomized opponent, or eliminated on the spot due to your luck failing. That being said…good luck.”
As soon as the Hero Elder stopped talking, the entire group proceeded to do as he instructed and used their aether to try and pull a single marble out of the strange treasure.
(Or in the case of Zhen Liu, he had Nepherage subtly possess him in order to make use of her aether in order to grab a marble).
It was in that moment, when their aether made contact with the treasure’s aura, that they all realized it wasn’t as simple as a lottery grab.
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‘Oh, what the fuck am I feeling? Its feels like my soul is being picked clean by those weird pedicure fish. Seriously, what the fuck?’
[Same here, milord. Its weirdly and…tingly. I’ve been told that is what falling in love feels like, and if that’s the case, I don’t want it.]
=Well that’s interesting. From a distance, I figured this was a plain old pocket dimension generating treasure, but the implementation at the opening is quite clever for a filtering mechanic…=
‘What?’
‘Create paths?’
=The treasure will produce barriers and or difficult spots within itself in order to have aether probes go in specific directions or take certain marbles over the others. Its not exactly rigging the competition, but it does seem to imply that the organizers of this event are looking for specific types of people.=
‘Huh…wait a minute, is this pathing thing part of the treasure itself or an addition?’
=If you’re thinking of injecting [Chaos] into the treasure to fuck with it ro whatever array is causing this shenanigan, don’t do it. While the chances are abysmally small at your current stage, we don’t want to risk you accidentally creating a proto-kaijin out of a Gold ranked aether treasure. That happened before and it wasn’t fun.=
‘Ah yes, more mysterious comments about my the activities of my mysterious forefathers…alright, fine. Guess we’re catching fish the old fashioned way.’
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After several moments of struggling, mild cursing and the threat of using someone’s entrails as a scarf, the group consisting of the Zhen branch clan scions, Alvis de Howlite, Iona Ecaredies and Ran Jinju, all managed to pull marbles out of the strange aether treasure.
“Oof! Is it too much to ask for y’all to wait your turns?”
On the plus side, none of the marbles were the color blue, aka, the color that would’ve forced the Zhen clan branch scions to fight one another for the sake of moving on to the next round, or the other members of their groups.
On the downside, all of the branch clans’ marbles were a deep red color that the mere sight of caused the Hero Elder’s eye to twitch with amusement. Apparently it wasn’t this red on a fluke, it had a deep and terrible meaning.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t believe it, but this group had managed to pull not one, not two, but seven different elite soldier marbles all at the same time! This means that instead of facing a singular Zhen Clan soldier, these warriors will have to fight a squad of five of them, each being led by an elite soldier, or to put it another way, they’ll have to fight off four Aether Acolytes and a Master in order to qualify for the next round.”
Gasp!
After hearing how these young warriors would have to face almost insurmountable odds in the form of being outnumbered, the crowd couldn’t help but to gasp in panic for them.
They had seen these volunteering soldiers absolutely wipe the floor with more than one vaunted genius competitor, they could barely imagine how one was supposed to fight five of them at the same time!
Why, they would have to be a one man army to go up against those kind of odds!
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‘OH THANK GOD ITS SOMETHING EASY!’
